Not so long ago in the distant past, just getting visitors to your ecommerce website was the number one goal for many businesses. Taking them on the long journey through the marketing funnel, was quite another. But over the last five years as technology, in particular customer trend tracking, has evolved so has your expertise in turning curious visitors into lifelong customers.
Even practises like SEO have changed. The emphasis on providing quality, organic searches has become a priority for many businesses, far and above over keyword stuffing and the other outdated practises. The drive towards providing high quality searches continues apace and even more so when it comes to providing customer experience on your site.
It’s not enough to simply capture your customer’s attention. They’re looking for an experience that intuitively meets their needs and that doesn’t just involve buying your product or service. It means responding to questions in a timely way, getting specific answers to queries and feeling valued as part of their user experience. It’s a tall order.
Here we’re exploring two aspects of conversation tech, the use of smart speakers and voice technology to find your page and how to keep customers on your site with smart conversational AI once they’ve found you.
Generate More Leads With Ecommerce Chatbots
Gather quality leads on autopilotwith automated chats
With the rapidly growing expertise of AI breaking into the ecommerce field, there’s never been a better time to use it in your business and here are 8 reasons why conversation tech is the future for your ecommerce business:
1. Customers Want Real Time Solutions
In a recent global survey, a staggering 91% of consumers indicated that, when they came up with a query, they were looking for real time assistance to solve their problem.
Ten years ago that would probably have meant a telephone call or in-person visit to a physical store, but today’s savvy consumer wants to continue their online experience with real time help from the website they’re visiting.
Ignoring this trend runs the very high risk of losing leads that very quickly could become paying customers. Harnessing AI technology to respond in real time, is the quickest and most efficient way of meeting this need. And while it feels intimidating, there are tailor-made solutions for developing your ecommerce site to keep your customers happy.
2. Half of All Households Will Own a Smart Speaker
Currently around one third of the global population owns a smart speaker, but this figure is set to rise to almost half in 2022.
Are you willing to let this opportunity slip by? There’s no doubt about it, in order to hit this market you will need to make some changes. Your ecommerce site can no longer be a simple affair and you will need to introduce some adaptations to help it get picked up on smart searches, but this is an investment that’s well worth making.
The good news is that ecommerce platforms come in all shapes and sizes and at varying costs, so creating your perfect space should only be a matter of conducting a little research.
3. Conversation Tech is Easy to Scale
Why is this important? Because as an ambitious business owner you’re hungry for growth. And you’ll almost certainly see that growth when you’re meeting the very specific needs of your customers consistently and quickly.
Generate More Leads With Ecommerce ChatbotsGather quality leads on autopilotwith automated chats
AI technology is relatively quick and easy to implement onto your site and once there can be scaled up to respond to the queries of your growing audience. And when it comes to communicating in real time with your customers, while live chat is useful it’s also harder to scale and harder to adapt. Chatbots, on the other hand, can be quickly scaled for growth, require less staffing and can respond in seconds.
4. Your Customer Demographic is Already Using the Technology
Image credits: Website Builder Expert
Unless you’re one of the relatively few businesses targeting a very specific age group, you’re likely hoping to attract working-age adults to your ecommerce site. Somewhere between the ages of 25 to 50, not ruling out ages either side of this bracket.
Statistics show that 65% of people aged between 25 and 49 are already using voice technology on a daily basis and these younger customers have the potential to stay with you for the long term, if their tech needs are met.
Your customers are there ready and waiting to find you, are you going to tap into this ready and willing market?
5. Customers Are Looking For Personalisation
When you make time to ask your smart speaker or start a conversation on a website (even if you know it’s AI), the experience feels personal. A conversation IS personal. To send an email is to take a step back. It can be saved in drafts, mulled over and sent later in the day, but conversation is to react and respond in real time and even if that’s just asking Alexa what the weather will be like, it’s a far more intimate experience than a typed email interaction. Plus, according to a whitepaper by Smarter HQ, brand loyalty among Millennials increases by an average of 28% through personalised marketing communications.
It’s also highly beneficial for business owners. One of the key cornerstones of SEO practice is nailing down customer intent. It’s why finding long tail keywords is so important. When you know the exact requirements of your customer you can provide the exact solutions.
This personalisation of search and response is unlikely to go anywhere. As we become an even more digitalied society, those rare moments of human interaction become highly valued. The fact that human interaction is powered by AI technology is a formality. It’s the feeling of being heard that your business can inspire and tap into.
6. Your Customers Demand Immediacy
When you’re looking for a particular product or service, what do you value most in the search process?
To answer this question, is to ask another: how many pages do you scroll through on Google looking for a website? The answer to this question is probably no more than one or two and that’s the key.
One of the key advantages of conversational tech for consumers is that questions are answered immediately. They are quite likely to be short of time and short of patience. When they’re asking Alexa for a local product or service, they want to go with the first one or two options, no more.
The same is true when they hit your site. The beauty of smart, adaptable AI is that it gives customers instant answers. And that’s something you have full control of, whether that’s answering a shipping query or dealing with a customer complaint. Providing almost instantaneous solutions isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s the future of customer service and ecommerce.
7. Conversation Tech is a Global Phenomenon
Source: CapGemini
You might feel that tapping into conversation tech isn’t for your demographic but statistics show that in almost every part of the developed world, this phenomenon is growing. Even if your country is towards the lower end of users, there’s a strong possibility that it will only grow and grow.
Getting on the ground floor is the perfect opportunity for your company and one that will set you apart from any competition that has yet to embrace its power.
While the top users (like Sweden and the US) are surging ahead, you can see from the graph that every country represented here shows an increase in use. Reversing the AI trend is unlikely to happen, using it for your benefit is by far the safer bet.
8. The Choice of Digital Assistants Will Grow
Source: Microsoft Bing
Your customers are a diverse group, each with their own quirks and needs. Some will be ardently committed to Apple products, others Android all the way. Whatever the type of user there will be a service provider for them.
With the likes of Apple and Amazon reaching into every home, the likelihood that your customer base won’t have access to conversation tech is significantly reduced. Again, this will mean putting into place best practice for building and scaling your ecommerce platform to work with these tech giants.
The Take Aways
Conversation tech for ecommerce platforms is going nowhere. In the next five years it will almost certainly be the most widely used method of selling to and communicating with customers. This isn’t isn’t just limited to a pocket of the world but is set to become a global phenomenon.
You can create significant differentiation from your competitors by providing the perfect customer experience using this technology and the great thing is you can scale it as your business grows and grows.
But getting found first is the challenge. Traditional SEO methods may need to be adapted to voice search but the cornerstone of these practises remains the same and that’s pinning down exact customer intent. When you know exactly what your customer needs then you can adapt your response and become their go-to product or service provider.
